December 24, 2010

I'm tellin' you boys, there ain't no noise

Don van Vliet's passing on the 17th is an occasion still beyond my power to fathom, let alone "blog." Instead, I offer as a tribute the following quasi-academic exercise in lyrics analysis. It would be perhaps more fitting of the grief and loss many of us are feeling, if I choseto delve into the unbearably mordant There Ain't No Santa Claus On The Evenin' Stage. (There was a Santa Claus on van Vliet's evenin' stage — his later-in-life career as an abstract painter.)

The man was deep. We shall not see his like again.

Glider

This song, one of the deepest in the Beefheart book, uses a long-form music underpinning which is harmonically, texturally and gesturally based in the blues. Dense, opaque and allusive (musically and lyrically) in the typical Beefheart way, Glider casts an ironclad spell on the listener, with plunging sound and swooping wordplay. Glider doesn’t follow the simple 12-bar repeating structure of the blues, and, due to the shifting percussion track, seems to sidestep any kind of repetitive armature until the closing minutes. Lyrically, it is a celbration song of sexual physicality and spiritual fulfillment, while superficially punning on the experience of flying a sailplane through a rainstorm. The opening bars are musically dark and foreboding (the song comes from The Spotlight Kid, perhaps the darkest in Beefheart’s canon); however, an ascending major melodic motif lifts the mood just before the lyric enters.

Into the sun in my — Glider

There's a shadow — beside 'er

The duality of lovers. The lover and her shadow. The speaker is the shadow? The sun of desire and its fulfillment creates a shadow, an eclipse of the speaker? He defines himself by her, by her form, by the shadow she casts. The ‘glider’ becomes here a penis, but if we take into account Vliet’s multilayered poetics, it’s also the sex act itself. Ease, pleasure, unencumbrance, a phallic shape, even Freudian interpretations of flying dreams – all are embodied in ‘glider.’ Also, crucially: silence. Suggesting that verbal communication has been transcended. (Later this theme is reinforced through the lyric “And I’m tellin’ you boys, there ain’t no noise”). finally, this lyric sets up an ambiguity unresolved in the song: Is the lover, the other –the glider– a mechanical vehicle which carries the speaker through to fulfillment? (more on this theme to come)

Up ‘n down through the blue,

Up ‘n down through the blue(s),

Clouds give me my silent cues.

The rhythm of intercourse: up and down, up and down. It’s a nod to older blues forms, through the explicit mention of ‘blue’ and the repetition (not to mention the suggestive sexual content). Through the blue (or blues) seems to be suggesting an archetypal experience of sexual union: transcending pain and suffering in ecstatic union. Again, silence is invoked as an important player in this experience. Clouds illustrate perspective, literally. Clouds are necessary to give motion meaning (one of fighter-pilot/filmmaker Howard Hawks’ cardinal rules: Don’t film airplanes against open sky.). Emotionally, clouds suggest darkness, negativity: the speaker is judging the lover’s mood. A glider is an unpowered aircraft which depends on invisible forces for its sustenance: wind and solar power. The sun warms the earth, creating thermal updrafts which sustain the gilder, just like large birds of prey are sustained in their circling patterns of flight. The technical aspect realized in ‘thermal updrafts’ is compelling, tantalizingly so, but it may be a stretch to imagine that Vliet was aware of this and was using it in another poetic/metaphoric conjuring of sex. The fact that a glider is unpowered seems significant: Vliet had a strong animus against human intervention with nature and it seems natural to assume he’d approve of a craft totally dependent on nature’s invisible whims for its conveyance (and survival). Some of his other works, such as Flash Gordon’s Ape, Blabber ‘n’ Smoke and Petrified Forest, address that feeling more fully.

An’ I’m up in my glider down

Up in my glider blue.

With a shadow beside her

And it begin to rain on her window pane

An' I'm up in my glider

Up in my glider blue.

“Glider down” is a simple pun on the “up and down” dynamic, again, and “eiderdown,” possibly a reference to a down comforter and a warm, sheltering bedroom ambiance. Now the pivotal image of a “shadow beside her” comes into place. On the face of it, “shadow” evokes emotional pain, not to say turbulence. Yet the speaker is also “beside her” – is he the shadow? If a shadow, there must be sun. Is the speaker the sun, providing warmth, light, and life? Or is the sun their love for one another? “With a shadow beside her, and it begin to rain on her window pane.” Ostensibly another straightforward reportage of flying in a glider, but we know better. Rain on a window is an old standby for crying. Emotional churn. And up in the glider, in the up-and-downdrafts of the storm.

There’s no shadow beside her

And it’s uh, thundrin’ and lightnin’

Hey boys, it’s — gettin’ pretty frightnin’

Oh I feel like an outsider

Then the sun shows through, an’

Right on cue, there’s a

Shadow beside her.

So concludes the main part of the lyric, a closed arc from peace to turmoil back to… some kind of settlement? As is often the case, Beefheart poses more questions, as answers. The glider passes through a thunderstorm and emerges into the light. But there’s that shadow beside her again! And it’s expected: “right on cue.” This is no ordinary love affair. In fact, it’s gettin’ pretty frightnin’.” Without the sun, and the shadow, the storms move in. The speaker is set into relief: “I feel like an outsider.” Which presents not only a tidy (yet removed, itself!) rhyme with “glider,” but a vignette of the speaker’s inability to connect with his lover’s emotionality, whether those storms come from an outside source or arise from the act of love itself. In the following lines, however, the expected sun and shadow reappear, and the speaker seems to be granted a safe haven once more. Beside her, or beside the shadow beside her…

Up ‘n down through the blue,

Up ‘n down through the blue,

Up in my glider

Up in my glider

Up in my glider blue.

An’ I’m, tellin’ you boys, there – ain’t no noise uh

Ain’t no noise uh

Ain’t no noise uh

Me ‘n’ my baby ain’t

Never gonna bring my glider down.

Me ‘n’ my baby ain’t

Never gonna

Bring my

Glider down.

No noise? Plain description of the engine-less flying craft, and of this singularly stormy relationship. Lifted by nature, warmed by the sun and set into its place in the sky among clouds and shadows, the glider travels via forces of nature and is sustained forever by the poet and his lover. No noise – smooth sailing, no friction, no impediments. It’s a description of an ideal love: without friction, gravity, or entropy.

Or a male’s idealized relationship: no talking, no crying, no demonstrations of any kind — except when Papa’s on top and calling the shots. Such an interpretation would have to climb on top of a pallet of sarcasm towards patriarchal values, since there’s strong evidence in Beefheart’s lyrical oeuvre of a decidedly feminist outlook (Nowadays A Woman’s Gotta Hit A Man, Sweet Sweet Bulbs). Meanwhile, the band finally locks into a groove — the kind of bonecrunching boogie that no band but the Magic was capable of — and the consummation is given flesh. A black-hearted joy erupts.

Interesting study. Nice extrapolations. I look forward to seeing his work receive more of this kind of poetic dissection over the coming years - the secret mainstream fans'll come out of their closets.